


Fine

by Stakebait



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-02
Updated: 2010-06-02
Packaged: 2017-10-09 21:06:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/91619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stakebait/pseuds/Stakebait
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One small moment before the end of the world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fine

**Author's Note:**

> Songfic. Spoilers through Lies My Parents Told Me.

  
Dawn likes to listen to the radio when it's her turn to do the dishes. Xander likes to watch Dawn listening to the radio. She rolls her eyes at the stupid DJ patter, sings along in a wavery, off-key voice and makes exaggerated pouty lipsynch faces into the sponge-bottle-mop thing in the dark reflecting window.

The good part of the being outside, besides the fact that for 20 precious minutes a night the worst he has to deal with is random vampires who only want to kill him and don't care if he's motivated, is the you can't see me, but I can see you.

The worst part is he can't critique the choice of music. Why can't Dawn listen to something mindless and danceable, so he can go to the special hell for watching her suddenly pert breasts bounce into and out of the window frame? Something in the late 98 degrees oeuvre, perhaps, though the name always makes Xander think of Spike and microwaves.

Instead, there is this, vibrating right though house's wood frame while the running water she's blaring it over is only a faint gurgle.

_it starts with an earthquake, birds and snakes_

I wonder whatever happened to Nancy, he thinks. I never called. Got a little distracted with the ex-girlfriend-killing spree that Buffy decided was the new black.

_Eye of a hurricane, listen to yourself churn_

Willow, he thinks, though it could be any of them really. Except Giles, who has other ideas about who should be listening to what.

_Uh oh, mumbleo, population, common food, but it'll do._

Back to Spike's eating habits, stirring with the thermometer that Xander used to stick under his tongue when he was sick and bitching like an old man with a snotty waiter.

_Save yourself, serve yourself. World serves its own needs_

That would always be Angel.

_listen to your heart bleed dummy_

There he was. Xander'd been wondering where he came in.

_with the rapture and the revered and the right -- right?_

The oh so right. Xander hit the clapboard side of the house as hard as he could. Anya's voice echoed in his head. "Xander blames the wall."

Yeah, Xander did blame the wall, because it wasn't pulling its wally weight, keeping the bad out and the good in and making sure he didn't have to ask which was which. How did he get here again, 20 years later, outside in the cold because that felt safer, more like home? Xander looked at his bleeding knuckles. Years of practice and somehow he still hadn't built it strong enough.

_A tournament, a tournament, a tournament of lies_

Buffy's speeches, the worst kept-secret in the world.

_offer me alternatives and I decline_

All of them, so locked into war and no hope and no time and no choice. Whatever happened to the days when they broke the rules and cut out early to go Bronzing? What were they getting done besides driving each other crazy? Xander wished he'd yelled back at Giles that actually this was exactly the time to go on a date, considering it was all the time he was probably ever going to have.

_ continental drift divide_

Buffy. Him and Buffy, who used to be friends. Everybody and Buffy, cutting herself off from Xander, from Giles, even from her sister. Everyone except Spike, maybe.

He'd heard them, late at night.

"The world is going to end, Spike." The new Buffy, harsh and strident. And then, a few minutes later, so soft he hoped he'd only dreamed it, "Oh god, what if it doesn't?"

Spike hadn't said a word.

Now he sauntered over from the corner of the yard, lit by the red tip of his cigarette and glowing, disembodied pale hands and face. "Poncy bleeding heart NPR-listening buggers suck their own dicks and call it counterculture," he said, conversationally.

Xander wondered how long he'd been watching, or listening. "What would you play, then?"

"For the end of the world?"

"Yeah."

"Spice Girls."

"Why?"

"So I wouldn't mind so much."

Xander laughed, low in his throat, and then he was crying, and then his mouth was full of snot and then smoke; his hands full of leather, and then nothing.

Something soft and nubbly, like a washcloth, moved over the back of his hand, and then the cold air on the wet cut, and then the sharp edges of something square biting into his thick fingers as someone wrapped them around it and pressed down tight. Xander's brain felt slow and hot. Blood – Spike — licked – cigarette pack. He felt quite proud of himself, for a moment, for figuring that much out, and then realized it didn't explain anything.

"What the?"

"Gonna die, aren't we?"

Xander nodded.

"So have a little fun first."

Xander shook his head and held out the cigarettes. "Choking fits, not my idea of fun."

He decided to leave untouched the part where he was pretty sure he'd had a vampire tongue in his mouth for a second there – a guy vampire tongue, in fact – and whether that was his idea of fun.

Spike's finger just brushed his palm as he took the cigarettes back and made them disappear into a pocket.

"You still have hope, don't you? You don't wanna get cancer in 30 years, 'cause you honestly believe you're gonna be here." Spike paused. "And you still want to."

"So what if I do?" Xander yelled back, stung. "So what if I'm too stupid to get what we're up against, why the talky thing that can't touch stuff is so much worse than Glory and the Mayor and everything else we've ever fought? Let me die thinking next year is coming. What does it matter?"

Spike shrugged. "It doesn't." He turned and walked away.

Xander looked up at the glowing window. It was empty. It bothered him that he couldn't remember seeing Dawn finish up and go.


End file.
